


Lithe

by orphan_account



Category: The L Word
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-14 01:10:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10525752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Even living on the other side of Los Angeles, Carmen still saw her every day.





	

She still had her work, both of her old jobs. She'd moved back in with her family, all of them so wonderful, driving her back and forth between one corner of L.A. to the other to get back her clothes, her DJ equipment. The first time her mother tentatively offered to set her up with a girl, Carmen had smiled so wide her face hurt and went to her room to bury her face in her pillow.

Every day, she would drive past the billboard and see Shane.

She must have needed the money bad, else there was no way she would have resorted to this. Was it drugs, some other absentee family member crawled out of a hole in the ground, a girlfriend?

It was strange, to be greeted with a sight she had recently seen every morning and night, if less airbrushed and without the empty look in her eyes.

Shane had never been ashamed of her body which, considering her life prior to hairdressing school, was the one healthy mindset she possessed. On anybody else, her frame would have seemed awkward, her skinny stature lacking much in the way of curves and breasts hardly the essence of womanly sex appeal. Although of course her body had never mattered. Where others would have tried to dress up their lanky figure into an illusion with fancy designer clothes and jewellry to draw the eye, Shane's jeans and shirts and ties and sneakers were straightforward and without flourish, all of it merging into an aura of utter carelessness and confidence that was magnetic.

_You're looking very Shane today._

That, at least, the company had apparently understood and capitalized on - they hadn't tried to get her to play dress-up in a gown or caked her face with more make-up than she would have otherwise allowed near her. They had played with her androgyny, equating that with an arrogance along with the implication of  _I've totally fucked more straight girls than any man leering over this photo._ Which Carmen knew wasn't a reach from reality.

Except Shane had never been arrogant. With her senseless grace, a way of meeting the eye that made you think of fire and catching your breath and a question of just what it is she saw in you, a voice that was simultaneously calming and dizzying and an unconscious charm that made everyone around her feel good, she couldn't help it if women threw themselves at her. She'd never had to try, to think of elaborate and ridiculous schemes to cheat and lie and seduce beyond a simple look. Carmen had been one more in a line of girls who let themselves be swept off their feet, the only difference being the strange light that had somehow gone out of Shane's eyes whenever she kissed Jenny.

Womanizer, Casanova, Don Juan - whatever names they had called her, they always beckoned cold and harsh images when she had never been anything else than honest and so, so warm.

Carmen hadn't stepped foot into the Planet since before Whistler and declined more than one offer to play the clubs in the West Hollywood area. She had not visited OurChart for months, not caring to see what girl Shane was hooking up with this week or if she had moved on by now, not sure which would have left a more bitter aftertaste. A few months back she had overheard her cousins, one of them gloating about how he would knock her bony ass into the dirt if she ever showed her face around the neighborhood again after the mess she'd left and she left the water in the shower on even as it seared her skin, as hot on her back as the tears on her cheeks.

Once or twice, she'd hear one of her friends snicker and mutter something about how they _wouldn't mind, definitely_ before they'd remember and stutter, stumble over themselves to apologize profusely. Carmen would give a faint smile, say it was nothing.

Still, she watched the billboard and heard her laugh in her head, saw her leaning back against the kitchen table in a white tank top with a cigarette between her fingers and her eyes taking in her body with unabashed desire.

When it disappeared - someone had vandalized it with tons of graffiti - some of the weight had been lifted off her chest whenever she made her way to work. In a way, she missed it. It had become a familiar, almost comfortable sensation.

Now all that she had to look forward to on her drives was a picture of a grinning animated pizza.


End file.
